The Neverending Thread for Political Shit

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LuthierJustin
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by LuthierJustin »

And give me examples of Obama's work....
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Zip City »

LuthierJustin wrote:And give me examples of Obama's work....


Government isn't a business
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Flood18 »

Give me an example of a logical rebuttal to someone else's viewpoint...

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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by LuthierJustin »

While he was running Bain in 96 his partners 4 yearold daughter went missing in NYC, he shut down the office,flew everyone to new york and found the girl.

In Boston a vets hospital couldn't afford milk for sick vets, he spent his own money and bought milk for the place annonomously, finally the guy who delivered it outed him.

And what has Obama done again?
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LuthierJustin
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by LuthierJustin »

Zip City wrote:
LuthierJustin wrote:And give me examples of Obama's work....


Government isn't a business

No, over meant should be run like a business, huge difference
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Zip City »

LuthierJustin wrote:
Zip City wrote:
LuthierJustin wrote:And give me examples of Obama's work....


Government isn't a business

No, over meant should be run like a business, huge difference


Then what does his business background have to do with anything?
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Zip City »

LuthierJustin wrote:While he was running Bain in 96 his partners 4 yearold daughter went missing in NYC, he shut down the office,flew everyone to new york and found the girl.

In Boston a vets hospital couldn't afford milk for sick vets, he spent his own money and bought milk for the place annonomously, finally the guy who delivered it outed him.

And what has Obama done again?


http://obamaachievements.org/list
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by LuthierJustin »

Flood18 wrote:Give me an example of a logical rebuttal to someone else's viewpoint...

Liberals don't understand logic, all they care about is emotion
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Penny Lane »

LuthierJustin wrote:And give me examples of Obama's work....



you're probably right, the President was NOT able to fix the economy in 4 years...i guess he should have been able to bring back the manufacturing sector, figure out how to NOT be dependent on foreign oil, been able to break everyone's cycle of dependency on government aid, blow the rug out from under the 'pyramid scheme' of social security, and create jobs out of magic fairie dust.

he got some of the world not to hate us as much due to our previous 8 years of an unjustified, illegal and costly war; he's trying to help some working poor be able to purchase health insurance by combining government and private sector (check out what Arkansas is doing right now), he's trying to balance the perils of fracking and coal mining versus the need for jobs and environmental stability, and amidst controversy, he assumed control of 2 major bailouts to prevent a catastrophic bottoming out, which we probably wouldn't have been able to recover from (depending on which economist you ask)...he's also been trying to quit smoking, but I can't say how well he's done at that..

a president's work tends to be limited due to Congress--try having a job where most of your co-workers' main goal is to make sure you don't accomplish anything..
Last edited by Penny Lane on Mon Oct 01, 2012 3:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Penny Lane »

LuthierJustin wrote:
Flood18 wrote:Give me an example of a logical rebuttal to someone else's viewpoint...

Liberals don't understand logic, all they care about is emotion


i don't consider myself liberal but centrist---but yes, apparently the entire party is hormonal about things like healthcare and jobs and the environment..
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Flood18 »

I dont believe I expressed a political viewpoint or association. I just think youre sadly misguided in whatever you are trying to accomplish, I assume your are filming some kind of mocumentary on message boards at this point.

On the off chance you are serious, I would imagine having productive conversations would be more beneficial to your cause than being a case study for a reasoning and critical thinking class by committing every fallacy I can remember learning.

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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by beantownbubba »

Penny Lane wrote:
LuthierJustin wrote:Right now companies aren't hiring and holding money because of all of Obamas hidden taxes. If Romney gets in, repeals Obamacare, companies will start hiring, the economy will get better when more people have more money, government is not the solution it's the problem.


Once again, LJ, you prove yourself to be entirely and completely ignorant and intellectually dishonest. IF, and it's a very big IF, there were such a thing as "Obama's hidden taxes" how could they have been passed w/out the cooperation of the Republican majority in the House? If businesses aren't investing because of Obama's hidden taxes, how did they manage to accumulate those huge cash piles they're now sitting on in such a horrible, high tax environment? And most importantly, and going back several months to some still unaddressed crucial points, how do you explain that a number of the very biggest, most successful corporations in America, companies like GE and 3M PAID NO TAXES LAST YEAR??????? And let's not forget that 3M is on record as complaining that its REFUND WASN'T BIG ENOUGH!!!! So what are these hidden taxes? How are they preventing business investment?

Let me add to the chorus: The idea that Mitt Romney is a successful businessman who "knows how to run things" is absurd. Even if the skills necessary to run a business were transferable to running a country (hint: they're not), there is no evidence that Romney has those skills. And please don't tell me that the Olympics, a government funded monopoly, is a "business".
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Penny Lane
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Penny Lane »

LuthierJustin wrote:While he was running Bain in 96 his partners 4 yearold daughter went missing in NYC, he shut down the office,flew everyone to new york and found the girl.


i beg of you to please cite this...PLEASE...let's break down exactly what happened versus what you just wrote here...
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by LuthierJustin »

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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Zip City »

beantownbubba wrote:
Penny Lane wrote:
LuthierJustin wrote:Right now companies aren't hiring and holding money because of all of Obamas hidden taxes. If Romney gets in, repeals Obamacare, companies will start hiring, the economy will get better when more people have more money, government is not the solution it's the problem.


Once again, LJ, you prove yourself to be entirely and completely ignorant and intellectually dishonest. IF, and it's a very big IF, there were such a thing as "Obama's hidden taxes" how could they have been passed w/out the cooperation of the Republican majority in the House? If businesses aren't investing because of Obama's hidden taxes, how did they manage to accumulate those huge cash piles they're now sitting on in such a horrible, high tax environment? And most importantly, and going back several months to some still unaddressed crucial points, how do you explain that a number of the very biggest, most successful corporations in America, companies like GE and 3M PAID NO TAXES LAST YEAR??????? And let's not forget that 3M is on record as complaining that its REFUND WASN'T BIG ENOUGH!!!! So what are these hidden taxes? How are they preventing business investment?

Let me add to the chorus: The idea that Mitt Romney is a successful businessman who "knows how to run things" is absurd. Even if the skills necessary to run a business were transferable to running a country (hint: they're not), there is no evidence that Romney has those skills. And please don't tell me that the Olympics, a government funded monopoly, is a "business".



It doesn't matter ,as LJ has told us that businesses just pass the taxes onto the consumers. So they don't pay taxes, but taxing them is bad. Or something
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by LuthierJustin »

Ok, say you have business's, where do get the money to pay your taxes if not from your customers? Where does that magic pot of money come from?
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Penny Lane »



thank you for citing Snopes (lol)...at least i got a link out of you..

well look who's getting all emotional? do your emotions not allow you to look at the following elements of this story:

1. timing
2. it's being said on a political commerical
3. by the Managing Partner of Bain Capital
4. whose daughter was tripping on ecstasy with her BF at a rave in NYC

i would never want to downplay a missing child---but um....THIS and him buying milk anonymously (he's a gazillionaire) are your go to examples?
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

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5 Hard Truths the Debates Won't Address

Taxes are at their lowest point in more than half a century, preventing investment in and the maintenance of America’s most basic resources: Hard to believe? It’s nonetheless a fact. By now, it’s a tradition for candidates to compete on just how much further they’d lower taxes and whether they’ll lower them for everyone or just everyone but the richest of the rich. That’s a super debate to listen to, if you’re into fairy tales. It’s not as thrilling if you consider that Americans now enjoy the lightest tax burden in more than five decades, and it happens to come with a hefty price tag on an item labeled “the future.” There is no way the U.S. can maintain a world-class infrastructure – we’re talking levees, highways, bridges, you name it — and a public education system that used to be the envy of the world, plus many other key domestic priorities, on the taxes we’re now paying.

Anti-tax advocates insist that we should cut taxes even more to boost a flagging economy — an argument that hits the news cycle nearly every hour and that will shape the coming TV “debate.” As the New York Times recently noted, however, tax cuts might have been effective in giving the economy a lift decades ago when tax rates were above 70%. (And no, that’s not a typo, that’s what your parents and grandparents paid without much grumbling.) With effective tax rates around 14% for Mitt Romney and many others, further cuts won’t hasten job creation, just the hollowing out of public investment in everything from infrastructure to education. Right now, the negative effects of tax increases on the most well-off would be small – read: not a disaster for “job creators” — and those higher rates would bring in desperately-needed revenue. Tax increases for middle-class Americans should arrive when the economy is stronger.

Right now, the situation is clear: we’re simply not paying enough to fund the basic ingredients of prosperity from highways and higher education to medical research and food safety. Without those funds, this country’s future won’t be pretty.
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Zip City »

Penny Lane wrote:i would never want to downplay a missing child---but um....THIS and him buying milk anonymously (he's a gazillionaire) are your go to examples?


Well, considering that the rest of his Bain Capital accomplishments involve shutting down American businesses and shipping the jobs overseas......
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by LuthierJustin »

Emotions are not bad all the time but if you're letting emotions run your view that's bad. Say here's a business, it has to lay off 1000 people or go bankrupt. The liberals would rather see no one get layed off, the whole company fail and everyone be out of a job, or say they could have cut salaries and kept people so everyone suffers for the few
Last edited by LuthierJustin on Mon Oct 01, 2012 3:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by LuthierJustin »

Smitty wrote:5 Hard Truths the Debates Won't Address

Taxes are at their lowest point in more than half a century, preventing investment in and the maintenance of America’s most basic resources: Hard to believe? It’s nonetheless a fact. By now, it’s a tradition for candidates to compete on just how much further they’d lower taxes and whether they’ll lower them for everyone or just everyone but the richest of the rich. That’s a super debate to listen to, if you’re into fairy tales. It’s not as thrilling if you consider that Americans now enjoy the lightest tax burden in more than five decades, and it happens to come with a hefty price tag on an item labeled “the future.” There is no way the U.S. can maintain a world-class infrastructure – we’re talking levees, highways, bridges, you name it — and a public education system that used to be the envy of the world, plus many other key domestic priorities, on the taxes we’re now paying.

Anti-tax advocates insist that we should cut taxes even more to boost a flagging economy — an argument that hits the news cycle nearly every hour and that will shape the coming TV “debate.” As the New York Times recently noted, however, tax cuts might have been effective in giving the economy a lift decades ago when tax rates were above 70%. (And no, that’s not a typo, that’s what your parents and grandparents paid without much grumbling.) With effective tax rates around 14% for Mitt Romney and many others, further cuts won’t hasten job creation, just the hollowing out of public investment in everything from infrastructure to education. Right now, the negative effects of tax increases on the most well-off would be small – read: not a disaster for “job creators” — and those higher rates would bring in desperately-needed revenue. Tax increases for middle-class Americans should arrive when the economy is stronger.

Right now, the situation is clear: we’re simply not paying enough to fund the basic ingredients of prosperity from highways and higher education to medical research and food safety. Without those funds, this country’s future won’t be pretty.



Complete lies
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Zip City »

LuthierJustin wrote:Emotions are pn't bad all the time but if you're letting emotions run your view that's bad. Say here's a business, it has to lay off 1000 people or go bankrupt. The liberals would rather see no one get layed off, the whole company fail and everyone be out of a job, or say they could have cut salaries and kept people so everyone suffers for the few


And Romney would rather fire EVERYONE, ship the jobs to China, and sell off the assets for personal gain. Doesn't sound very Presidential
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by LuthierJustin »

Again outright lies and falsehoods conjured up by the left to scare stupid people aka Obamas base
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by sactochris »

LuthierJustin wrote:
Smitty wrote:5 Hard Truths the Debates Won't Address

Taxes are at their lowest point in more than half a century, preventing investment in and the maintenance of America’s most basic resources: Hard to believe? It’s nonetheless a fact. By now, it’s a tradition for candidates to compete on just how much further they’d lower taxes and whether they’ll lower them for everyone or just everyone but the richest of the rich. That’s a super debate to listen to, if you’re into fairy tales. It’s not as thrilling if you consider that Americans now enjoy the lightest tax burden in more than five decades, and it happens to come with a hefty price tag on an item labeled “the future.” There is no way the U.S. can maintain a world-class infrastructure – we’re talking levees, highways, bridges, you name it — and a public education system that used to be the envy of the world, plus many other key domestic priorities, on the taxes we’re now paying.

Anti-tax advocates insist that we should cut taxes even more to boost a flagging economy — an argument that hits the news cycle nearly every hour and that will shape the coming TV “debate.” As the New York Times recently noted, however, tax cuts might have been effective in giving the economy a lift decades ago when tax rates were above 70%. (And no, that’s not a typo, that’s what your parents and grandparents paid without much grumbling.) With effective tax rates around 14% for Mitt Romney and many others, further cuts won’t hasten job creation, just the hollowing out of public investment in everything from infrastructure to education. Right now, the negative effects of tax increases on the most well-off would be small – read: not a disaster for “job creators” — and those higher rates would bring in desperately-needed revenue. Tax increases for middle-class Americans should arrive when the economy is stronger.

Right now, the situation is clear: we’re simply not paying enough to fund the basic ingredients of prosperity from highways and higher education to medical research and food safety. Without those funds, this country’s future won’t be pretty.



Complete lies





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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Zip City »

LuthierJustin wrote:

Complete lies


Really? Taxes aren't at the lowest rate in 50 years?
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Tequila Cowboy »

LuthierJustin wrote:Complete lies


No. You're wrong.

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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by LuthierJustin »

Because you can manipulate the numbers to tell you that,you can also do it to say they are the highest
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Zip City »

LuthierJustin wrote:Because you can manipulate the numbers to tell you that,you can also do it to say they are the highest


no you can't
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Penny Lane »

LuthierJustin wrote:Emotions are not bad all the time but if you're letting emotions run your view that's bad. Say here's a business, it has to lay off 1000 people or go bankrupt. The liberals would rather see no one get layed off, the whole company fail and everyone be out of a job, or say they could have cut salaries and kept people so everyone suffers for the few


okay see that's where i think you are SOMEWHAT right..but not completely...

i think Liberals (sane ones) would understand having to trim the fat and that layoffs are INEVITABLE.

Now what I PERSONALLY have a problem with are his business ethics and morals--

LJ, you don't seem to have a problem with anything that goes on on Wall St or apparently or anything Bain Capital does. So tell me if any of this bothers you..AT ALL? If nothing here bothers you, he is definitely the man you think he is..


Mitt Romney's job at Bain:

1. getting a bunch of investors to invest in your negotiation skills and your company (I'm cool with that..)
2. taking that money and buying a company that's headed for trouble or in trouble already (still cool with that)
3. taking over the managerial reigns of that company with the company's permission -or without if that co is broke (pretty okay with that)
4. negotiating a HUGE fee for your services (capitalist baby! i love it...and this still is okay--free market reigns)
5. seeing WASTE in that company and trimming the fat, laying off unnecessary workers, tightening ship (pretty okay with this, too, believe it or not)
6. taking company's liquidity and spending it to get the bottom line at zero (hmm...okay nothing seems THAT bad yet, i might be amenable to this)
7. once company is at zero, asking for a HUGE ass loan for this company because company is now broke, yo! maybe from a huge bank where all your banker friends work...or from the government where more of your friends work.. (this seems a little risky)
7. managing co/or not managing co--it no longer matters, your fee is negotiated. (smart thinking!)
8. company goes bankrupt anyway, you incur no personal liabilities for this (yay legal loophole!)
9. You make millions of dollars and walk away with your fee, having contributed and created nothing... (SWEET!)
10. Company goes bankrupt. Debt incurred by bank/govt/taxpayers (Boo).

But at least he found that raver girl and paid for that milk...

My problem with him is the intent behind all this. It's perfectly legal for your bottom line to be 'to make investors money'..that was his right. He wasn't trying to save these companies. Half of the time it worked (Staples) and half the time it tanked (KB Toys). My problem is that they incur no liability and used the big banks and the government for this. There was no fallout for them. Even if it was legal, does it sit right with you?

I don't have a problem with laying people off to save a company or make it better. Dead weight needs to be removed for something to grow, that's life.
Last edited by Penny Lane on Mon Oct 01, 2012 4:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The 2012 Thread for Political Shit

Post by Smitty »

LuthierJustin wrote:
Complete lies


If you want to run gov't anything remotely like a business, which is what you repeat over and fucking over, name ONE business that can survive without revenue?



http://robertreich.org/post/5993482080

The Truth About the American Economy

Monday, May 30, 2011

The U.S. economy continues to stagnate. It’s growing at the rate of 1.8 percent, which is barely growing at all. Consumer spending is down. Home prices are down. Jobs and wages are going nowhere.

It’s vital that we understand the truth about the American economy.

How did we go from the Great Depression to 30 years of Great Prosperity? And from there, to 30 years of stagnant incomes and widening inequality, culminating in the Great Recession? And from the Great Recession into such an anemic recovery?

The Great Prosperity

During three decades from 1947 to 1977, the nation implemented what might be called a basic bargain with American workers. Employers paid them enough to buy what they produced. Mass production and mass consumption proved perfect complements. Almost everyone who wanted a job could find one with good wages, or at least wages that were trending upward.

During these three decades everyone’s wages grew — not just those at or near the top.

Government enforced the basic bargain in several ways. It used Keynesian policy to achieve nearly full employment. It gave ordinary workers more bargaining power. It provided social insurance. And it expanded public investment. Consequently, the portion of total income that went to the middle class grew while the portion going to the top declined. But this was no zero-sum game. As the economy grew almost everyone came out ahead, including those at the top.

The pay of workers in the bottom fifth grew 116 percent over these years — faster than the pay of those in the top fifth (which rose 99 percent), and in the top 5 percent (86 percent).

Productivity also grew quickly. Labor productivity — average output per hour worked — doubled. So did median incomes. Expressed in 2007 dollars, the typical family’s income rose from about $25,000 to $55,000. The basic bargain was cinched.

The middle class had the means to buy, and their buying created new jobs. As the economy grew, the national debt shrank as a percentage of it.

The Great Prosperity also marked the culmination of a reorganization of work that had begun during the Depression. Employers were required by law to provide extra pay — time-and-a-half — for work stretching beyond 40 hours a week. This created an incentive for employers to hire additional workers when demand picked up. Employers also were required to pay a minimum wage, which improved the pay of workers near the bottom as demand picked up.

When workers were laid off, usually during an economic downturn, government provided them with unemployment benefits, usually lasting until the economy recovered and they were rehired. Not only did this tide families over but it kept them buying goods and services — an “automatic stabilizer” for the economy in downturns.

Perhaps most significantly, government increased the bargaining leverage of ordinary workers. They were guaranteed the right to join labor unions, with which employers had to bargain in good faith. By the mid-1950s more than a third of all America workers in the private sector were unionized. And the unions demanded and received a fair slice of the American pie. Non-unionized companies, fearing their workers would otherwise want a union, offered similar deals.

Americans also enjoyed economic security against the risks of economic life — not only unemployment benefits but also, through Social Security, insurance against disability, loss of a major breadwinner, workplace injury and inability to save enough for retirement. In 1965 came health insurance for the elderly and the poor (Medicare and Medicaid). Economic security proved the handmaiden of prosperity. In requiring Americans to share the costs of adversity it enabled them to share the benefits of peace of mind. And by offering peace of mind, it freed them to consume the fruits of their labors.

The government sponsored the dreams of American families to own their own home by providing low-cost mortgages and interest deductions on mortgage payments. In many sections of the country, government subsidized electricity and water to make such homes habitable. And it built the roads and freeways that connected the homes with major commercial centers.

Government also widened access to higher education. The GI Bill paid college costs for those who returned from war. The expansion of public universities made higher education affordable to the American middle class.

Government paid for all of this with tax revenues from an expanding middle class with rising incomes. Revenues were also boosted by those at the top of the income ladder whose marginal taxes were far higher. The top marginal income tax rate during World War II was over 68 percent. In the 1950s, under Dwight Eisenhower, whom few would call a radical, it rose to 91 percent. In the 1960s and 1970s the highest marginal rate was around 70 percent. Even after exploiting all possible deductions and credits, the typical high-income taxpayer paid a marginal federal tax of over 50 percent. But contrary to what conservative commentators had predicted, the high tax rates did not reduce economic growth. To the contrary, they enabled the nation to expand middle-class prosperity and fuel growth.

The Middle-Class Squeeze, 1977-2007

During the Great Prosperity of 1947-1977, the basic bargain had ensured that the pay of American workers coincided with their output. In effect, the vast middle class received an increasing share of the benefits of economic growth. But after that point, the two lines began to diverge: Output per hour — a measure of productivity — continued to rise. But real hourly compensation was left in the dust.

It’s easy to blame “globalization” for the stagnation of middle incomes, but technological advances have played as much if not a greater role. Factories remaining in the United States have shed workers as they automated. So has the service sector.

But contrary to popular mythology, trade and technology have not reduced the overall number of American jobs. Their more profound effect has been on pay. Rather than be out of work, most Americans have quietly settled for lower real wages, or wages that have risen more slowly than the overall growth of the economy per person. Although unemployment following the Great Recession remains high, jobs are slowly returning. But in order to get them, many workers have to accept lower pay than before.

Starting more than three decades ago, trade and technology began driving a wedge between the earnings of people at the top and everyone else. The pay of well-connected graduates of prestigious colleges and MBA programs has soared. But the pay and benefits of most other workers has either flattened or dropped. And the ensuing division has also made most middle-class American families less economically secure.

Government could have enforced the basic bargain. But it did the opposite. It slashed public goods and investments — whacking school budgets, increasing the cost of public higher education, reducing job training, cutting public transportation and allowing bridges, ports and highways to corrode.

It shredded safety nets — reducing aid to jobless families with children, tightening eligibility for food stamps, and cutting unemployment insurance so much that by 2007 only 40 percent of the unemployed were covered. It halved the top income tax rate from the range of 70 to 90 percent that prevailed during the Great Prosperity to 28 to 35 percent; allowed many of the nation’s rich to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax; and shrunk inheritance taxes that affected only the top-most 1.5 percent of earners. Yet at the same time, America boosted sales and payroll taxes, both of which took a bigger chunk out of the pay the middle class and the poor than of the well off.

How America Kept Buying: Three Coping Mechanisms

Coping mechanism No. 1: Women move into paid work. Starting in the late 1970s, and escalating in the 1980s and 1990s, women went into paid work in greater and greater numbers. For the relatively small sliver of women with four-year college degrees, this was the natural consequence of wider educational opportunities and new laws against gender discrimination that opened professions to well-educated women. But the vast majority of women who migrated into paid work did so in order to prop up family incomes as households were hit by the stagnant or declining wages of male workers.

This transition of women into paid work has been one of the most important social and economic changes to occur over the last four decades. In 1966, 20 percent of mothers with young children worked outside the home. By the late 1990s, the proportion had risen to 60 percent. For married women with children under the age of 6, the transformation has been even more dramatic — from 12 percent in the 1960s to 55 percent by the late 1990s.

Coping mechanism No. 2: Everyone works longer hours. By the mid 2000s it was not uncommon for men to work more than 60 hours a week and women to work more than 50. A growing number of people took on two or three jobs. All told, by the 2000s, the typical American worker worked more than 2,200 hours a year — 350 hours more than the average European worked, more hours even than the typically industrious Japanese put in. It was many more hours than the typical American middle-class family had worked in 1979 — 500 hours longer, a full 12 weeks more.

Coping mechanism No. 3: Draw down savings and borrow to the hilt. After exhausting the first two coping mechanisms, the only way Americans could keep consuming as before was to save less and go deeper into debt. During the Great Prosperity the American middle class saved about 9 percent of their after-tax incomes each year. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, that portion had been whittled down to about 7 percent. The savings rate then dropped to 6 percent in 1994, and on down to 3 percent in 1999. By 2008, Americans saved nothing. Meanwhile, household debt exploded. By 2007, the typical American owed 138 percent of their after-tax income.

The Challenge for the Future

All three coping mechanisms have been exhausted. The fundamental economic challenge ahead is to restore the vast American middle class.

That requires resurrecting the basic bargain linking wages to overall gains, and providing the middle class a share of economic gains sufficient to allow them to purchase more of what the economy can produce. As we should have learned from the Great Prosperity — the 30 years after World War II when America grew because most Americans shared in the nation’s prosperity — we cannot have a growing and vibrant economy without a growing and vibrant middle class
E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.

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